The consortium took a novel approach by analyzing the five key disorders as if they were the same illness. The study involved researchers in 19 nations who amassed a sample consisting of 33,332 people with psychiatric illnesses and 27,888 controls.

“The major accomplishment of this collaborative effort is to begin to apply well-powered modern molecular gene-tic techniques to attempting to answer one of the oldest questions in psychiatry: ‘What are the etiological relationships between our major psychiatric disorders?’” says Dr. Kendler.

The findings of the study were published in The Lancet and point to at least four locations in the human genome that appear to confer a risk that cuts across the five disorders. Two of them occur in genes that encode proteins that are important in a class of tiny pores called calcium channels that regulate the flow of calcium into cells.

“The finding that calcium channel signaling genes are involved in multiple psychiatric disorders raises the possibility that targeting this pathway might offer new opportunities for treatment,” says Dr. Smoller. He also hopes that studies like this one will lead to improved diagnostic tools for the disorders. While each of the individual genetic associations identified account for a small amount of risk for mental illness, the study opens the door for further investigation of the overlapping areas identified. With continuing research that identifies causes of illness, diagnostics for mental illness based on neuroscience and genetics, in addition to observed behavior, become an achievable goal.

Article comments

I recently discovered that I too had a calcium problem at the root of my mental disorder and I fixed it by elevating my calcium intake. In addition to calcium supplements, I also taking omega-3 supplements to boost the level of calcium my blood can hold and avoiding very high oxalate foods to allow more calcium to be absorbed from the gut. I suffered many psychiatric conditions from depression to psychosis and finally seizures over a 13 year period with symptoms occurring on a weekly basis and now I’m cured.